5 HR Tech Trends Shaping Your Business

Technology continues to drive and disrupt today’s talent management strategies. As we move closer to the halfway point of 2017, we take a look at 5 key HR tech trends shaping your business.

Cybersecurity skills challenges

The widely publicised global data breach that affected the NHS last month highlights the very real risks to all businesses. After the talent shortage, PWC notes that cybersecurity is the second highest ranked concern for CEOs, with three quarters (76%) citing this it as a significant challenge in its annual CEO Survey. A UK government report also found that half of all businesses have experienced at least one data breach or cybersecurity attack in the past year, rising to two thirds of medium and large businesses. Your ability to secure your data is an increasing issue and the pressure is on HR to source talent with vital cybersecurity skills. A report from Experis found that demand for cybersecurity professionals is at an all time high, echoing an earlier survey from Robert Half, Technology and Recruitment : The Landscape For 2017 which found that sourcing tech talent with cybersecurity skills was a priority for over half of all hiring managers this year.

The ongoing debate over AI

Predictions of a jobless world have thrown the debate over AI sharply into focus but AI and automation offer a number of benefits for hiring teams. Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Satya Ramaswamy describes ‘machine to machine’ transactions as the ‘low hanging fruit’ of AI rather than ‘people displacement’.

Elsewhere, Gartner predicts that by 2022 smart machines and robots could replace highly trained professionals in sectors including tech, medicine, law and financial services, transforming them into ‘high margin’ industries resembling utilities. But it stresses the benefit that AI brings in replacing repetitive, mundane tasks and offering more meaningful work. The key is to create the right blend of AI and human skills, which HR is ideally positioned for. Gartner suggests that a further benefit of AI is the alleviation of skills shortages in talent starved sectors.

A beneficial and immediate use of AI for HR is the automation of mundane and repetitive tasks in the recruitment cycle through HR technology, allow hiring teams to focus on creating the effective candidate and employee experience that their business urgently needs.

Chatbots in hiring

Today chatbots are emerging as an essential tech tool for high volume recruitment, engaging with candidates via messaging apps with the aim of creating a more interactive and engaging hiring process. The AA was one of the first brands to feature this smart technology and this year it is predicted that chatbot Stanley will interview 2.5 million candidates. As the skills shortage continues, the chatbot offers a more direct and effective way of engaging with sought after millennials or graduate talent. Chatbots are also predicted to make HR’s life easier through simple interactions via mobile devices for both candidates and employees.

Dark data

While still in the exploration stage, dark data can offer vital insights into talent sourcing. Up to 80% of the data created is ‘unstructured’ or ‘dark’ data found in, for example, e-mails, text messages, spreadsheets and pds. At present it is not usable in analytics but AI can be leveraged to organise it into a more usable form. Last month it emerged that Apple have acquired a machine learning based company to strengthen its own capabilities in the area of dark data. Deloitte’s Global Talent Trends report for 2017 reports that only 9% of businesses have a good understanding of the talent dimensions that drive performance. Dark data may help to illuminate those dimensions.

Moving to predictive analytics

It’s not a new or emerging HR tech trend but the transition to predictive analytics is one that HR must eventually (reluctantly?) make as the skills gap in the UK widens and the availability of qualified and digitally able candidates continues to fall. Applying people analytics improves hiring outcomes, reduces the level of early departures from your business and enables HR to begin to predict and plan for future hiring needs. The first step towards predictive analytics is for tech-averse hiring teams to relinquish manual recruitment systems in favour of HR technology and begin to understand the key metrics affecting your hiring process.

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